save for the thousand ant-hills. Then suddenly the rainy season sets in.
Torrents fill the rivers, and the sandy plain is a sheet of water.
Almost as suddenly the rain ceases, the streams dry up, sucked in by the
thirsty ground, and as though literally by magic a luxuriant vegetation
bursts forth, the desert blossoms as a rose. Insects, lizards, frogs,
birds, chirp, frisk and chatter. No plant or animal can live unless it
live quickly. The struggle for existence is keen and short.

It seems as though the change came and life was born by magic, and the
primitive Australian takes care that magic should not be wanting, and
magic of the most instructive kind. As soon as the season of fertility
approaches he begins his rites with the avowed object of making and
multiplying the plants, and chiefly the animals, by which he lives; he
paints the figure of the emu on the sand with vermilion drawn from his
own blood; he puts on emu feathers and gazes about him vacantly in
stupid fashion like an emu bird; he makes a structure of boughs like the
chrysalis of a Witchetty grub--his favourite food, and drags his body
through it in pantomime, gliding and shuffling to promote its birth.
Here, difficult and intricate though the ceremonies are, and uncertain
in meaning as many of the details must probably always remain, the main
emotional gist is clear. It is not that the Australian wonders at and
admires the miracle of his spring, the bursting of the flowers and the
singing of birds; it is not that his heart goes out in gratitude to an
All-Father who is the Giver of all good things; it is that, obedient to
the push of life within him, his impulse is towards food. He must eat
that he and his tribe may grow and multiply. It is this, his will to
live, that he _utters and represents_.

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